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The Many Lives of XP

By Stephen Williams April 28, 2009 5:29 pmApril 28, 2009 5:29 pm

The Microsoft Windows XP story continues, and is about to enter the virtual realm.

The company has confirmed that it will offer a “virtual” add-on to the next-generation Windows 7 operating system — called Windows XP Mode, or XPM — that gives users the option of backward compatibility with the much-loved (and less-irritating-than-Vista) XP OS.

The Windows XP Mode package will be offered as a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3), and as a free download, but only to users running the Professional, Ultimate and business-oriented Enterprise editions of Windows 7, the three priciest editions.

The aim is not to subvert the new OS, but to bolster it, says Microsoft’s Scott Woodgate on a company blog. “All you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode,” Mr. Woodgate wrote. “The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop, and then you can run them directly from Windows 7.”

In other words, there will be no need for the user to run the virtual XP as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, the XP programs will come up directly under the Windows 7 host desktop, with shortcuts placed under the Start menu.

There are some screen shots of the new program published on the site of a blogger, Paul Thurott, who is one author of a book, “Windows 7 Secrets,” due out later this year.

Microsoft has also announced that it would post Windows 7 Release Candidate, the nearly finished version of the system, for public download on May 5.

Finally, M$ capitulation!
Vista and the Win7 liferaft are e[XP_OS]ed as a self-serving toys
with no compelling business reason to adopt. That leaves first-adopters and need-to-be-up-to the -latest service geeks to pay the freight and blow their balloon.
Win XP was the end of the road for DOS and the code bloat to beyond finds an analog in the financial stimulus schemes soon reaching the tipping point where each dollar of credit stimulation produces a negative GNP result.
Next step is to sell XP Pro for 25 bucks and watch them find the R-O-W ready to play to get updates to a successful service and thank Goodness IBM let him have this nice ride since 1981

Of course the aim is not to subvert the new OS. It is to subvert XP. I run the network of a government agency with 450 computers, most of them 4 years old. They run XP and varied applications smoothly, even after all the patching up. They cannot run Windows Vista and obviously won’t be able to run 7, without significant upgrading, as there hasn’t been any reduction in resources hogging worth mentioning. Sooner or later we will have to change. But we will go about it feeling like aware lemmings at the brink of a cliff, unable to save ourselves of the flood of unthinking rodents pushing as over the edge. And most of the equipment, which won’t be any longer any good, will go to landfills just because the leading OS company is too lazy and too cheap to deal with the bloat. So much for green conscience. Not everything is bleak though: we might be marching to a malaria-free extinction.

“we will go about it feeling like aware lemmings at the brink of a cliff, unable to save ourselves of the flood of unthinking rodents pushing us over the edge”. Jorge, I wrote that down in my diary to remember forever. You hit it right on the nail! It applies to our world today in more ways than one. “There is a sucker born every minute”. That is another famous quote. The catch phrase of those rodents pushing us over the edge is “let’s move on” and Microsoft will use them to it’s advantage. By the way, I like suckers. My hat’s off to them. They are the guinea pigs and the ones who will easily part with their hard earned money. They keep me employed and wealthy. In the meantime I will keep using XP for a long time and so will my company. It works!

Linux and open-source are looking better and better. My once-agency (now retured) is in the same boat as that of Jorge, above. Government agencies have a hard enough time dealing with current technology that works–due to serious security concers, etc…..

Something so embedded into our operation culture as is Microsoft’s OS should be classed as a public utility, and some serious controls imposed over it.

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